How We Got Overrun By Healthy Kids (And How It’s All Your Fault!)

PLC cofounder Cody Fisher with little Ali (who apparently wasn't too excited about having his picture taken)

It’s official. We’re overrun. And it’s all your fault. (But we’re not complaining.)

When we first started doing this back in 2007, we were around a lot of sick children and very few healthy ones. Because Remedy Missions are spreading across Iraq, we’re still coming across more and more sick children in more communities, but thanks to you guys we’re starting to spend a lot more time with children who USED to have heart defects.

Last week you helped us provide our 163rd heart surgery. Tomorrow, we’ll give our 175thSee how fast it’s all happening?! It was easy to reach the point where we felt overwhelmed by the thousands of sick children in Iraq, but I never thought we would reach the point where we became overwhelmed by the healthy ones. 

Thanks to you, we have. 

This Remedy Mission, I’ve had the chance to catch up with the local doctors and scroll through all the photos of children from the past missions. We talk about how they’re doing and often they just pick up the phone right there and call them. We’re constantly coming up with ways where we can see them all in person again, too.

Recently, we found a way to see Ali Raad from our third Remedy Mission and he’s doing GREAT! When I asked his family about the biggest change since Ali’s surgery, they smiled and threw their hands in the air and said, “He just doesn’t stop playing!” Ali’s journey isn’t quite over yet though.

Like a lot of children born with heart defects, he was born with a cleft pallet as well. It’s a simple fix but because of his heart defect, doctors couldn’t operate on his cleft pallet unless his heart was fixed. Now that his heart is strong, they just have to wait a few more months to fix his cleft pallet! If you never gave Ali his heart surgery, he would never have been able to get surgery on his cleft pallet and as a result he never would have had the opportunity to go to school or eat the foods he needs to be eating to grow. 

But that’s not the case. Your generosity saved his life and put him back on track to enroll in school next year!